Forum and community features

Here’s my to to-do/done list enhanced site features. Most have to do with enhancing community features, and giving an extra plus to registered members. I’ll update this list periodically so you can see what new features have been added.

‘Favorite’ a post, forum topic, etc. Just click the heart link at the bottom of a post when it appears. You can track your favorites on the Your Favorites page. (You can still track all your activity, including your own posts and comments, favorited, etc. from the Tracker link on your Account page.)

‘New Forum Activity since last visit’ list, as per BarbJ’s request and because it’s an awesome idea. You’ll see the listing below the main forum listing on the forum pages (if there has been any new activity), plus a link to the main new forum activity page in the Your Account, etc. link section.

Private message feature - actually this is already available! Just click the little envelope icon under the user name. (If you don’t see an envelope it means that person has disabled their personal contact form.)

An enhanced user profile page with more scope for adding information - see this post.

Can this forum software do a "unread posts since last visit" button? I find it very useful on other forums I belong to.
It helps me not miss recent posts.

Great idea! I've implemented it now. :) You should see a listing of the 5 most recent new-activity forum posts at the bottom of the forum listing pages, plus a link to the main new-activity tracker page.

Thanks Dawn! I actually used the built-in forum features of Drupal, which is the content management system that all my sites run on. I chose it after a lot of agonizing and testing out a lot of other forum packages (phpBB, punBB, SMF, etc etc etc) before deciding that this was the right way to go. I'll talk about why I chose what I chose sometime (deep geek talk alert :))

I like this way of incorporating the forum into your whole website and design. It makes the blog much more community oriented. I'm on a forum using phpBB and I like it, but I think I can understand why you chose this as well. Simple, easy to use, and gets the job done! ^^;

Can this forum software do a "unread posts since last visit" button? I find it very useful on other forums I belong to.
It helps me not miss recent posts.

Great idea! I've implemented it now. :) You should see a listing of the 5 most recent new-activity forum posts at the bottom of the forum listing pages, plus a link to the main new-activity tracker page.

Thanks! I do see it and it's great! You've done an excellent job on this whole project!

I had another question/suggestion.
I was wondering, does this software include a private messaging application? I was thinking of especially of the Marketplace forum, where people may not want to post information like their home address or email addresses in pubic, but need to give them to the other person, to mail trades and sales.
A PM function would really help with that. Thanks.

I had another question/suggestion.
I was wondering, does this software include a private messaging application? I was thinking of especially of the Marketplace forum, where people may not want to post information like their home address or email addresses in pubic, but need to give them to the other person, to mail trades and sales.
A PM function would really help with that. Thanks.

Actually there is already a contact form for each person; if you click on the little envelope icon under the user name/pic, you'll get to a contact form where you can send a message to the person, which will be sent to the email address they registered under.

Thanks for running such a great site/forum. You are really inspiring me to build a better lunch every day!

I was wondering if there is a way of adding where someone lives into the information at the side of the posts. This would be helpful if someone is talking about using a certain ingredient that is only found in the US or Japan or wherever. Perhaps little country flags or a text field? I know a lot of people have said where they are from in their introduction posts, but my memory is not that good! ;)

Argh! You actually found a serious problem with the forum. When you post a new topic, there should be a dropdown menu present where you can select the forum topic. For some reason that had gone poof (since I don't know when...a week or so I think). It's fixed now - thanks for finding it! Now when you post a new forum topic, you should see that dropdown menu. I've moved your crispy-food topic to General Bento btw (since it doesn't have a recipe per se in it) - hope that is ok!